ABSTRACT
In September 2007, the Lawyers Walk for Justice campaign spearheaded by the Malaysian Bar Council involved lawyers who marched to Putrajaya, the newly developed centre of government, to appeal for integrity in an increasingly corrupt judicial appointment system. Since the 1970s, the post-colonial nation of Malaysia has often been described by political science scholars as a pseudo-democratic, semi-authoritarian or an illiberal democracy. From the 2000s onwards, another collective mobilisation that was communal or ethno-cultural in nature was taking shape among the aggrieved Indian minority in Malaysia. Religious issues appeared to cut across prevalent Indian ethno-cultural cleavages and diverse pockets of Indian sub-groups. Specific issues which affected the Indian underclass revolved around the unfair terms of retrenchment from rubber plantations, the legal eviction of the former plantation workers and their families without adequate compensation, as well as the forced relocation of the Indian underclass to urban squatter settlements.
